


wrapped up tight

by verulam (krynon)



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: BDSM themes, Dreams, Dubious Consent, Eye Surgery, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krynon/pseuds/verulam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys dreams sometimes, about the eye thing. About the arm.<br/>Rhys struggles to get to grips with the eye, and then struggles to get to grips with Jack. It's not really as easy as it should be. </p><p>"It should be threatening. It should make him pale and nervous and sweaty, but- it doesn't sound violent. Not the way Jack says it, like it's curled around his tongue and drenched in honey or something."</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrapped up tight

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write my first borderlands thing about the whole cybernetic eye thing- because holy Jesus that must have hurt. And then that idea got away from me, so I decided to write a bit of of JackRhys porn instead. They fit together, so here we are!
> 
> This does contain graphic depictions of surgery and pain, as well as dubious consent and D/s themes. 
> 
> Not beta read because I belong in the JackRhys garbage and it's one in the morning. If anyone notices anything, please drop me a comment!
> 
> Title from "I am disappeared", by Frank Turner.

The dream is not a pleasant one. His cybernetics had hurt, a lot. The conscious surgery to install the port hadn't hurt so much as ripped him apart, but the thing is, even though Rhys anticipates it, he still goes to sleep. He's been three days without- sunlight stays on Pandora for a full 90 hours- and it's killing him a little. So when he settles down for bed- on the top of the sleeping bag, it's far too hot on Pandora to go beneath it- he fully expects to see the surgery.

 

Rhys succumbs to sleep.

 

The first thing he becomes aware of is that the world is orange where it shouldn't be, and that he can understand things- and people- that he couldn't before.

It tells him the name of the Doctor that looms above him -Doctor Orr- and tells him that they have 14 years of implant experience and know their way around an eyeball better than Rhys knows a business card.

 

The second thing he notices is that everything is orange if he tries hard enough: the deep piercing glare of it enough to make him squint.

 

The third thing is that squinting is fucking agony.

It's like it's ripping into his brain, splitting out at his temple right up near his eyes, holy shit, he's never felt anything like this- his head feels open, exposed, trapped and trembling under a scalpel, he's awake, why is he awake?!

He clutches a desperate hand to his eye, pauses and then screams.

 

He has two hands and one is gold and new and built of an alloy.

 

One of them feels like it's wrenching on his spine, because it is, embedding itself deep into the hole he's had for years. It's implanted deep, deep in, too deep to rip out, too deep to remove-

 

He looks at it and feels the information rush into his brain. A steady flood of noise that hurts with every further word he comprehends without thinking- it's Hyperion, expensive, and is replacing the arm he lost to a wound when he was ten, that was inflicted approximately 5 weeks before infection got in and ruined his whole arm, through the bones and into the bloodstream, the removal operation was on February 23rd and he'd cried, and Rhys tries to cry now but can't seem to so he screams instead.

The doctor- Orr again, this time armed with a needle made of a material his eyes don't recognise with pressure significantly above average and a liquid that contains a sedative poised and dripping from the tip, the eye tells him it's going into a tube sticking out of the real arm and that it's going to stop the pain and keep him away from all the pain for an hour or longer and it'll make it stop, it'll make it stop, it'll make it stop-

 

The needle hits the tube and Rhys relaxes gratefully into faux-sleep.

  
  


The second time he's awake it's a lot less... Terrible. The eye works selectively now, and all he has to do is focus and it snaps through to tell him everyone's secrets.

It turns out that the reason he doesn't remember losing the eye in the first place is because being stabbed in the eye is reasonably traumatic, and that he doesn't remember when the Doctors drilled into his brain for much the same reason.

 

"I have two arms now," Rhys scratches out, but it falls flat against the decor. The doctors aren't in the room- a quick scan of the nearest screen tells him it's around 3 20 in the morning, and that everyone- Hansen, Orr and Hotori, the eye provides- is asleep or with another patient right now.

The arm- the new one, shoved into his nervous system with the none of the finesse used on his eye- feels heavy and strange, and when he tries to turn to look at it and fails, the eye helpfully informs him that the drilled out hole in his brain should really hurt, right about now.

The moment he shifts, and the skin pulls taut around the port, Rhys screams.

The eye yells facts at him, concrete walls with a facade of tiling and a roof with more asbestos than is safe and a lightbulb packed with halogen and a TV screen thinner that one sheet of paper and-

When it passes after what feels like an eternity (the eye informs him it's been 32 seconds) he huffs out a desperate breath.

"Shiiiiiii-iiit," the pain aches through him as he talks, but it's got nothing on the pain from the port. He hears footsteps, and as the shoes round the door, the eye informs him-

Leather, very expensive, rubberised soles, 7 months of wear, no scuffs, built for comfort not style-

"No kidding, kid. No kidding." Doctor Orr is a reasonably tall woman, built for speed and not strength, and the eye tells him that he probably couldn't beat her in a fight.  "How're you feeling?"

"I-" Orr is 42, with one child and a love of watching race car driving in all its forms- "-how do ..."

"Switch it off?"

Rhys nods as the eye tells him her heartbeat and blood pressure and favourite food.

"You don't."

Rhys lifts his head to try and gape at her but he pulls on the port and suddenly he's writhing again-

There's a fist inside his brain- a drill skimming along his brain tissue and a hammer smashing into the remains of where his old arm stump used to be and it's excruciating, beyond losing his arm in the first place and beyond anything he's ever felt-

And then Rhys is out cold again.

 

Exactly 1 hour later Rhys is awake again, and Vaughn is there, reading a book (652 pages, says the eye, as boring as they come) and frowning, and shitting hell is it good to see him.

"Vaughn," he tries to say. It comes out "Voorn", but it's the best he can do under the circumstances.

Vaughn whips around. "Holy shit, bro. I heard about- goddamn, look at your eye, are you okay?" Vaughns eyes flicker about his face as he fumbles to switch off a light near his book and he's nervous, sweating and smiling-

"Vooorn," Rhys smiles.

"Man, I- are you okay? Your eye is only meant to do that when it's scanning stuff."

Rhys tries to muster a confused look, but the muscles near his eyes don't move.

"Ow," he mumbles blearily as one of them twitches valiantly against his eye socket. "Owwww."

"Shit, dude." Vaughn says, after a short pause. Resting a hand against Rhys's arm- he almost delights in the fact that he can feel both arms before he realises it's the arm he had before anyway- Vaughn continues, "I'm glad you're alive."

"Mrr," Rhys says. "Wh'app'n-?" Rhys winces at the falter of his voice, then groans deeply as something pulls against his head.

Vaughn hisses in sympathy. "Ah, sorry buddy, don't try to talk. Brain surgery, I forgot. Y'need to take it easy."

Rhys closes his eyes gently, and mumbles: "ow."

Then he realises that the light he'd been seeing from the room hadn't been from the room at all.

Vaughn had switched the light off.

It had been from his eye.

Which was still glowing.

"Shiit," he pushes out through his thick tongue. "E-ye."

"Rhys, are you okay? It's an ECHO eye, they said they told you-"

But Rhys glares at him as best he can with slack muscles, and interrupts.

"Glowh," he says, and tries his best to reflect the smugness on his face, "Too, breeet."

"I- the eye? I told you dude, it looks like that when its scanning stuff-"

"Can't... not."

Vaughn peers at Rhys's face from up close.

"Rhys, close your eyes." He pauses, noting Rhys' already closed brown eye, sticking out as sharply dissonant from the illuminated mechanics in the other. "Uh, close your... Eye."

Rhys mumbles "m'not tired."

"Okay, buddy." Vaughn is patient, but it's clear he wants Rhys to shut his eyes- eye. The, eye, he guesses. It's going to be pretty difficult for Rhys to refer to it as his own when it's busy lighting up and scanning stuff without permission.

So Rhys does.

"Holy shit dude, you're not kidding, are you? It's still glowing." There's a long period of silence, Vaughn crouched over to peer at what Rhys can only assume is the light shining through his eyelid."Listen, can I-"

Rhys' eye slam open as he feels cold fingers at his temple.

"I- oh, I thought you were asleep, sorry. C-can I?"

The hand at his head is cold and suddenly Rhys can feel the seeping burning heat from the new eyeball, could almost trace the path of the drill following the patterns of burnt nerves under his skin.

"Mrr," says Rhys, and Vaughn must read that as a yes because the fingers lay more gently across his forehead and try to cool him down just that little bit.

It's pleasant, really- not unlike what his mother had done when he was a child and had his accident, when he'd been lying in hospital after the operation and shivering.

But it's Vaughn, not his mother, and when Vaughn peers in interest at the port and moves to trace his fingers on it, the sensation is nothing like the soothing presence of his mother, and far more like the feeling of Doctors sawing through bone and sinew and-

 

It's white hot against his brain, sparks fly (except they don't) and he screams, low and deep and wrenching like it's being ripped from him and it is, it feels like Vaughn has grabbed into his brain and stolen from him, shoved a fist in the port and twisted-

 

"Shit, dude- Rhys, Rhys!"

And Rhys wants to reply, he really does, but even though Vaughn's hand has flown up and away it still feels like he's being burnt alive, errant flames swirling through and into the mechanics-

"Augh-"

And the lights in the room flicker back to on, the machines go haywire, and Rhys hears the thundering footsteps of the Doctors, come to make it stop and get him away from this because it's all too much inside his head-

There's a split second where the pain is so bad that Rhys can't imagine anything but pain.

Then the eye informs him the Vaughn is the only one in the room, that the footsteps are really the desperate flailing of his legs against the bed- he heaves a breath and yelps out as he somehow nudges the socket- and the Doctors haven't switched on the lights, he has.

The machines aren't broken, he's making them-

There are no Doctors coming.

He sobs out a cry, forcing his eyes too wide and staring at the ceiling and focusing on nothing -

 

Something clicks, deep inside his brain.

And just as quick as it came, it stops.

The lights stay on, but the machines calm and so does he, the bright screech of the ECHOeye quitened to something that doesn't obstruct everything.

 

"I- Off," he says, "Oww." He can't manage anything more than that right now.

"Oh, s-shit, Rhys, I'm so sorry I didn't think it would do that, I-"

But Rhys flails a lazy arm up in what he hopes is reconciliation, and Vaughn seems to get the picture.

They sit in silence.  

"Damn, Rhys." Vaughn breaks the quiet and Rhys is thankful for it. It helps, apparently, to listen to something other than the whirring in his skull. "Your eyes- when we get a mirror, you are going to be so smug, you little fanboy."

"Wh," says Rhys, and bites back the urge to wince. The more it hurts, the less eloquent he is, and it's pretty damn clear that Rhys doesn't have an awful lot of eloquence to spare at the moment.

"Don't worry about it dude. It'll be a nice surprise when we finally get you out of here."

Rhys goes to sleep to the gentle whirring of the hole in his head.

  
  


Learning to use the eye isn't too hard now he knows which muscles to relax to get the damn thing to switch off. It reacts like a normal eye would, now- it's a damn sight better than the flickers of hours he remembers when he'd had just the one. It's more sensitive than the other, flickering and twitching and the slightest movement, but strangely blasé about anything actually physical.

Vaughn- after agreeing never, ever to put his hands near the port ever again- figures that out by accidentally jabbing his fingers into it.

The only reason he flinches is because holy shit, does it feel weird to have his eyeball pressed up at the back of his socket- especially now the thing's partly metal.

Vaughn stands there shuddering and staring at his fingers, blinking at blank space.

Rhys doesn't say anything because it's weird, like. It's cool, but it's weird, something he shouldn't be able to do- he doesn't even use the arm, it sort of hangs limply and twitches on cue. The Doctors don't really know what to do about that- Rhys hasn't had an arm there in over 15 years, and it's kind of weird for him to be told now to "use it like he usually would."

The eye, though. That's another story.

Rhys scans everything in the little hospital room, the glass, the metal, the walls and the people- he learns so much, and pretty soon he does it as second nature- he's lusting after information he has no right to, and he realises that, but- come on. He's just had brain surgery, and if he knows that Corgi's are Doctor Hansen's favourite breed of dog, then so be it.

  
  


He's out of the hospital three days before they let him take the milky UV resistant contacts out and he can see his new eye.

"Holy shit."

"Fuckin' told you, man!" Vaughn hollers at him from the kitchen. "You're like Jack mark 2!"

"I-" Rhys stutters over his words, because he hadn't even considered that- even without the resemblance, which honestly, Rhys is not complaining about, the eye is really, really pretty.

It's bright blue, delicate indications of wire under the surface the only indication that it wasn't quite real- and then when he moves to scan himself, that's the kicker.

"Holy fuckin' shit, man." It's pretty.

It's so pretty, it's goddamn gorgeous, and Rhys has never been one for overwhelming narcissism, but God damn,  it looks fantastic, and he's not going to let a fake modesty get in the way of that.

 

Vaughn rounds the corner, and peers into his new eye. He whistles appreciatively.

"Damn, man. Looks even better without blood in it, y'know?"

"Dude, you were totally right." Rhys hasn't really looked away from the mirror, from where his eyeball lights up the strands of his hair, not quite perfect after so long away from the routine of work.

"Totally got a bit of Handsome Jack in it too, huh, fanboy?"

Rhys preens and adjusts himself in the mirror.

"Yeah, man. It looks fantastic."

  
  
  


His head fills with dreams of owning the company, rubbing Vasquez's stupid fucking face in the dirt and pushing Yvette, Vaughn and himself right to the top of the goddamn food chain, hanging easy and confidently on the top of it all, the new eye and arm making him a poster boy, no more of this subservience shit- no more "code monkey", not for him-

 

The dream ends, the ghost of words- "code monkey, huh?"- wrenching up his wretched spine.

 

And then his eyes shoot open and Jack is hovering above him with a snarling, dangerous smile.

"Aw, pumpkin, looks like you do have some fight in you, huh?"

Rhys flinches and shudders as Jack slides his hand over the port, and as soon as he goes to shout, in pain or in something, Jack's in control. The metal arm pulls over his mouth, ever treacherous, and Jack seems to draw himself up above him.

He'd been fucking dreaming, and it's the first time in fucking forever that he'd slept through the aftermath and actually gotten to the life afterwards and Jack had woken him up, the asshole. And- when Jack loosens his hold, Rhys thoroughly takes the opportunity to shout.  

"Hold the goddamn phone, can you see my dreams?!"

When Jack grins he turns white, and when Jack swoops in to croon "bingo" into his ear he has to restrain a snarl because seriously. Fucking no.

But then his hand- Jack's hand- closes over his mouth and nose again and Rhys is left desperately silent to conserve oxygen.

"So, kiddo, let's have a quick chat, shall we?" Jack grins and straddles him comfortably, holographic feet resting on Rhys' face as if it was actually somehow useful beyond humiliation. "So, what've we learnt? First, you've got a little rebellious streak in you, huh? You wanna teach this Vasquez guy a lesson, Huh?" It's punctuated with a kick of his boots up into Rhys' face, and Jack laughs obscenely loud when Rhys flinches back. "Yeah, pumpkin, we're going to work that right out of you."

And here's where Rhys starts feeling uncomfortable: it should be threatening. It should make him pale and nervous and sweaty, but- it doesn't sounds violent. Not the way Jack says it, like it's curled around his tongue and drenched in honey or something.

"Secondly, I'm going to have this-" the hand clenches around his mouth, and Rhys yelps a little underneath the metal- "whenever I friggin' want. That sound good to you pumpkin?"

It's becoming painfully obvious that this is turning him on, and Rhys really, really hates himself for it. The lack of air is punching in through his thoughts and thinking clearly, linearly, is getting harder and harder.

"Thirdly," this time he lets the hand go, just for a second, and Rhys gasps in a breath. There's no time to breath out before the hand clenches down again.  "I'm gonna see you down on your knees licking my damn boots before you even think of comparing yourself to me again."  The hand clamps down so hard he's seeing stars, and holy shit, if his dick wasn't hard before it most certainly is now.

"Come on, pumpkin, it's not so hard. All you'll have to do is give yourself to me. And hey, it's me. I wouldn't complain!" He chuckles as his voice gets darker, and Rhys feels his eyes flicker, trying desperately to scan it's way out of a chokehold. "Ah ah ah, Rhysie. That's not going to work. Come on, kid. Just let me..." Jack drops down from the midair perch, now so near his ear, so near the port, and the oxygen must be getting to him because it's all so near. "...own you."

And the look of satisfaction and laughter and something unbearable sinister on Jack's face as his cock twitches valiantly is almost enough to make him cum in his pants like a teenager.

The hand moves down to his neck and suddenly Rhys is holding back the noise himself and not doing so well, little gasps and rasps escaping his now open mouth.

"Ah, yeah. That's what I thought, pumpkin."

 

Jack's hand clamps down on his neck and it shocks him because it feels good, so good, and it occurs to him that he's played right into Jack's hands, he should have shouted for help when he could, he's done this all according to Jack-

"Damn right you have, cupcake." He chuckles, and Rhys's legs jolt up because- was Jack reading his thoughts?

"Got it in one, pretty boy."

Jack's other hand, the one not controlling the vice force around his neck, is suddenly at his port, and it hurts so much that he's almost whimpering but goddamn is his cock not filling up, desperate for more-

"A-ah-"

Jack's head is suddenly above his, towering and controlling. The look on his face seems to imply that he's shocked- even through oxygen starvation Rhys can tell that Jack hadn't planned on anything sexual beyond humiliation to happen. But it's pretty clear the moment Jack forms a new plan- it's sharp against his features and his eyes, as the vice grip on Rhys' throat sticks like glue even as he thrashes around beneath it.

"Aww, lookit you, sweetheart. So pathetic, writhing off being strangled by your own hand... You're getting off on me controlling you, huh? On me owning you?"

And Rhys mumbles and yelps beneath the hand, but even without words, it's pretty clear it's a fumbled assent.

"What was that, pumpkin?"

"Mmrph-"

"Oh, I'm going to need to hear that again." Jack looks obscene, staring down with his legs spread and Rhys between them, like a king, like a god- and Jack is down beside him again.

"Kiddo, If you don't beg me right now I'm going to force my fist into your brain and twist-"

Finally, the hand lets up, and Rhys drags out a desperate moan from his tortured throat.

Jack seems to have forgotten about the begging thing, because although Rhys is uttering desperate pleas under his breath and his head feels clouded up with lust, cock hard and swollen under his boxers, Jack is just sitting there and looking.

"I'm gonna turn you into a pet, pumpkin. You're going to sit and look pretty with those mechanics of yours-" Jack grins as Rhys winces. The dream- "- and I'm going to have you between my legs for as long as I please. That clear, cupcake?"

"I-" Rhys isn't feeling very eloquent right now, eye spasming in phantom pain where Jack had jammed his fingers in and cock half heartedly twitching against his stomach.

"I said," and Jack is once again in his personal space, close enough that had he been alive, Rhys might have begged to suck him off- Jack briefly blinks, interrupted.

"Okay, kiddo, I get you can think about it. You're not good at a lot, I know you like blowjobs, you're desperate to become my little whore, yadda yadda whatever." Rhys' cock twitches again, and he almost curses it, treacherous fucker.

"But I am not a patient man, and if you don't start talking soon you will see where my patience ends as I burn you to cinders from the inside."  Rhys' insides turn icy, snapping and crackling under fear and whatever it was that was controlling his dick, juggling lust, pride,oxygen deprivation and not a small amount of hero worship around in his head. Jack smiles, widely and with far too many teeth.

"Okay, pumpkin, this'll be the last time I ask."

The hand is back, but this time in his hair, and it is absolutely not fair that Handsome Jack of all people has seen his dreams because he feels obscene, head thrown back like the whore Jack wants him to be-

"Do you want it?" Jack purrs into his ear, soft and sultry and so dangerous- Rhys cock is so swollen that if Jack had been able he'd probably have tried to otherwise hurt it somehow, try to smother it down and away and Christ he shouldn't moan at that, God, but he absolutely is-

Lips near his ear, and he can't feel them but he swears he can- "Do you want to be my pretty little whore?"

"Y-yesss-" Rhys says, and it feels ripped from him, tossing his head back further as the hand behind his head does its best to keep his whole neck on display.

"Come on Rhysie, you can do better. Say it again."

"P-please, P-lease, own me, I-" and this time is better he can tell, because Jack is smiling, the hand pulled tight as it can go before it starts to rip through tangled hair, and Rhys is straight up moaning.

"Tch, no, no, no," says Jack, and Rhys almost feels devastated because he'd done it, tried his hardest for Jack, Jack, who'd bent him over and fucked him so hard in his dreams he's screamed awake-

"Oh, come on cupcake. Say my name."

When he says it, it doesn't have any of the sultry and lusty liquid tones of before- it's a command, nothing less than the words of a man that will get what he wants and Rhys wants to help-

"J-aack, please-" Jack is smiling and Rhys knows he's going to regret this in the morning but he's rutting up into his flesh hand, pulling gently away from the one in his hair to increase the friction.

"Good work, Rhysie." He says, sounding genuinely pleased as Rhys tries desperately not to let his gasps too loud. "Again."

"Jack, please please, I-" There's no hesitation and it feels so good, his voice and his arm and if he squints his hand against his cock- "Pleeeeeease Jack," and it's a wail, a sound Rhys would be ashamed of if it didn't make Jack lean forward and smile- "Own me, please, I need it- please, Jack-

Handsome Jack, please-"

And that's all it takes for Jack to move.

"This is gonna hurt," he says and the hand pulls so tight in his hair it drags the skin around the port back and he winces and desperately thrusts up harder. "But trust me," Jack's blue hand goes over to the port, not quite touching and Rhys winces around an open-mouthed, wanton moan when he realises that he's going to let this happen- Jack speaks directly into his ear, so close, so close - "You're gonna love it."

 

Jack jams his hand into the port as he jerks the hand in his head backwards and Rhys feels like his head is split in two but holy shit does his cock feel so good and he's twitching, he's so near, can't  concentrate on anything but his own hand clutching at his cock and the sensations dragging him at the head-

And then Jack gently removes his fingers.

Rhys stares up at him, uncomprehending and desperate and so near to cumming it hurts-

 

"Okay kitten," and this smile does scare him, because it means that Jack is either going to kill him or make him cum so hard he dies- Jack places his mouth over the port and Rhys squeezes his eyes shut so tight-  "I'm gonna make you scream."

 

Jack blows on the port and Rhys does scream, bucking up desperately and wailing out Jack's name, shuddering up and down on top of his sleeping bag, covered in sweat and his soiled boxers, but he's still cumming and holy shit holy shit.

 

When the orgasm ends, and he can see again, the first thing he notices is that the hand is his own again.

The second is that Jack is still perched above him, lounging like an emperor.

The third is the huge, shit eating grin on his face. Rhys opens his mouth to speak, but Jack interrupts.

"So, honeybun, I own you now. How about that, huh?"

  
  



End file.
